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If you ask a question, you should pay. If I provide you with useful help, you should pay. If I suggest a commercial solution to your problem, who should pay? If I harass you for not knowing the answer to the question, I should pay.<<

Hmm, reminds me of the Compu$erve Forums, which, ironically, met their demise (imho) when the WWW (and Usenet) started to blossom. ex 70720,151 ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> To: "Stephen Stuart" <stuart@tech.org>; <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 3:32 PM Subject: Re: Reducing Usenet Bandwidth

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I would argue that what USENET needs is a way for the cost of publication to be incurred by the publisher; storing the data in your own repository (or repositories) while pointers get flooded through the USENET distribution system would give publishers an incentive to do garbage collection that they do not have today.

Like many Internet settlement schemes, this seems to not make much sense. If a person reads USENET for many years enjoying all of its wisdom, why should he get a free ride? And why should the people who supply that wisdom have to pay to do so? A USENET transaction is presumed to benefit both parties, or else they wouldn't have configured their computers to make that transaction.

Does it make sense for the New York Times to pay me to read it? But perhaps it does for the Weekly Advertiser.

The reason that automated schemes such as "publisher pays" will fail is because determining who "should" pay is too complex for automated schemes. You will just push around who takes advantage of who.

If you ask a question, you should pay. If I provide you with useful help, you should pay. If I suggest a commercial solution to your problem, who should pay? If I harass you for not knowing the answer to the question, I should pay.

DS